Casting around the media at the moment all you seem to see is gloomy news. But look in the right places and you may be surprised at what is going on. Despite the reluctance of banks to lend and consumers to spend, there are people in Britain ready and willing to do things differently to get their own area of business moving.
One of the many areas of the economy that I had not really considered before, that of gas safety engineering, is an example. To work on gas appliances you need to be qualified and appear on the gas safe register. And any customer who wants work done on their gas system should check that their engineer is properly qualified and registered.
‘What has this to so with free gas safety checks’ you ask, I’ll come onto that in a second.
I recently happened to meet Sean Barratt of the Gas Safe Corporation Limited. He told me that there is a bit of a shortage of gas safe engineers and that there are many jobs going in the industry and that the pay isn’t bad at all. So I later Googled it and found many jobs available across the country.
There are many companies offering gas safety training so you would think that there would be enough engineers to go round. According to Sean there are plenty of people entering the training but a bit of a dribble coming out at the other end.
The issue is that in between the initial classroom type training and the end assessment there is a period in which the trainee is expected to go out and build a gas safe portfolio to show the practical work that they have done in the field under supervision. The portfolio has to show examples of required work to complete the course. Also, the work has to signed off by a competent, qualified and registered gas safe engineer.
At the moment there is no structure to this part of the training and trainees are pretty much left to their own devices. This leaves many part trained people hunting around for a friendly qualified engineer to put time aside to help them.
Doing his bit to boost the economy and get people trained, Sean has started a company that will help trainees build their portfolios. This will require the trainee to invest in the course as he obviously can’t do it for free (currently £975 plus VAT). He has had no shortage of trainees but what he needs are more qualified engineers who want to get paid for helping trainees gather the evidence for their portfolios.
Now we come to the free bit. To train these people properly he needs plenty of work for them to do. So, what he is offering to do is conduct gas safety checks for free. This will be especially attractive to anyone who has multiple properties that are required by law to have a gas safety certificate. But more than the free check he says that if there is work that needs doing and if it is part of the trainee’s portfolio building requirements the remedial work will be done for the cost price of any materials only. Backed up with receipts etc. The work will be overseen, checked and signed off by a properly qualified gas safe engineer.
Now he cannot guarantee to do this for anyone who asks. It all depends on where the trainees are.
If you want a free gas safety check, or are a qualified engineer looking to earn by helping train new engineers or if you are having trouble putting your portfolio together then go HERE and register at the bottom of the page.
So, there is an example of a firm looking to do it differently in today’s economic climate and getting on with business. And offering something for free in the bargain. It’s not all bad news out there you know!
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Tags: business, free gas safe checks, gas safe corporation, gas safe portfolio, gas safe training, News, training
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